Ton has been working at the NKI since 1996, alongside his work as a group leader at the Oncode Institute and professor of immunotechnology at Leiden University. His research group focuses on developing new technologies to study the functioning of T-cells, which are vital to the immune system, and the way they are used in the fight against tumors.
What does winning this award mean to you?
"It is always nice to receive recognition for your work, and it's an occasion for me to reflect on what we have achieved over the past decades. It is remarkable how much knowledge and possibilities we have acquired in terms of cancer treatments. None of this had been an option when I started here as a student. The collaboration between research and clinic has been growing over the years, and fundamental research is increasingly applied in clinical practice. This makes scientific cancer research incredibly exciting nowadays.”
What is the focus of your research?
“We investigate how the immune system manages to suppress cancer cells. This started as fundamental work, not specifically aimed at cancer. Years ago, we described the mechanisms by which sick cells in the body present protein fragments on their surface to the immune cells. When immunotherapy started showing its first encouraging results, John Haanen and I decided to apply our shared knowledge to understand how immunotherapy enables the immune system to destroy cancer cells. We wanted to know why this therapy works in one patient and not in another, and particularly how T cells in our immune system can recognize tumor cells as abnormal.”
For which research did you win the award?
“We developed a new technology that helps us understand how T-cells can recognize and eliminate cancer cells. We then demonstrated that abnormal protein fragments from DNA damage in cancer cells play a key role in the recognition of cancer cells by the immune system. This probably also explains why this type of immunotherapy shows the most activity in cancer types with relatively high DNA damage. In collaboration with Christian Blank, we used our understanding of T cell activity to propose that immunotherapy before surgical tumor removal, known as neoadjuvant immunotherapy, would work better than immunotherapy after surgery. This hypothesis proved correct, and neoadjuvant immunotherapy is currently investigated worldwide, sometimes with spectacular results.”
You recently stepped down as interim scientific director at NKI. How did you experience this role?
“I took on the role of interim director for eight months following the departure of René Medema, until the recent appointment of Thijn Brummelkamp as our new scientific director. It has been a very positive experience. It is inspiring to work with so many people on the Executive Board as well as other departments. It made me realize that we are a fairly equal organization with very little hierarchy, making many people feel involved and able to come up with new ideas. One such example is the Friday Spotlight Seminar, an internal weekly seminar series to excite one another about research conducted in our organization. Our workplace culture allows us to think carefully about what suits us as an institute, and how we can conduct the best science. The sense of community is a historical strength of the NKI.”
What do you hope to have contributed to NKI during your time as interim scientific director?
"I hope that I made my colleagues at the NKI feel that I was there for them. My goal was to help the NKI take a step forward together, and I hope I have strengthened the sense of community."
What will be the next focus in your career?
"In addition to my current role, I work at a venture capital fund in America for two days a week. Combining this role with my work as a group leader and interim scientific director proved to be difficult, so I will have to rebuild this role. The fund looks for interesting ideas in science and new companies to build. My lab now focuses on creating large datasets and models to predict T-cell recognition. We want to evaluate and further train these models until we can precisely predict how an individual patient's immune system recognizes cancer cells. That is the big ambition and challenge. The NKI is still a very special and inspiring place for me."
